The present invention relates generally to a recording and/or reproducing apparatus for a magnetic tape cassette, such as a magnetic tape cassette specifically suited for pulse-code modulated (PCM) recording and reproduction. More specifically, the invention relates to the construction of the recording and/or reproducing apparatus including a rotary head, a loading mechanism and so forth, which construction allows the recording and/or reproducing apparatus to be more compact.
In recent years, various magnetic tape cassettes applicable to recording and/or reproducing apparatus with rotary heads have been proposed. The construction of one typical magnetic tape cassette recently developed and proposed and applicable to recording and/or reproducing apparatus of the type having a rotary head is disclosed in the European Patent First Publication No. 01 60 822, published Nov. 13, 1985, and the British Patent First Publication No. 2,155,905, published Oct. 2, 1985. The recording and/or reproducing apparatus includes a tape loading system. This tape loading apparatus extracts magnetic tape from the magnetic tape cassette and moves the extracted length of tape to various predetermined positions relative to the rotary head according to the selected operating mode of the recording and/or reproducing apparatus.
Conventionally, it has been considered difficult to make this rotary-head-type recording and/or reproducing apparatus satisfactorily compact due to the many relatively complicated mechanisms, such as the tape loading mechanism, a brake mechanism, a drive motor and power train, and so on.
As is well known, the loading mechanism includes movable blocks movable along predetermined paths. The blocks have structural elements which initially reach behind the magnetic tape and which draw the tape out of the cassette as the blocks move away from the cassette. At the block position where tape loading is completed, the magnetic tape has to be wound around at least half the circumference of the rotary head. Therefore, at the loading-completed position, the movable blocks have to be at least on diametrically opposite sides of the center of the rotary head. Generally, the rotary head is mounted on a mechanical chassis at a position laterally offset from the longitudinal center axis thereof. On the other hand, the front ends of the predetermined paths of the movable blocks generally lie closer to the longitudinal center axis. This means that the lengths of the paths through which the movable blocks have to travel differ, so that the movable blocks must cover different distances to reach their respective positions. This requires rather a complicated drive arrangement for simultaneously driving the movable blocks through different strokes.
Furthermore, the recording and/or reproducing apparatus must have sufficient space on both lateral sides of the rotary head for the movable blocks. This limits the lateral compactness of the recording and/or reproducing apparatus. On the other hand, the rotary head must be far enough from the cassette, i.e. from the front ends of the movable block paths, that the other ends of the paths can lie close to the rotary head without interfering with its rotation. This limits the longitudinal compactness of the recording and/or reproducing apparatus.
In addition, the recording and/or reproducing apparatus of this type requires a operation mode switching mechanism including a brake mechanism for providing a braking force for restricting or limiting rotation of the tape reels and a tape tension control mechanism for controlling the tension on the magnetic tape. Conventionally, this operation mode switching mechanism has been in the form of a control mechanism independent of the loading mechanism. This makes the recording and/or reproducing apparatus complicated and thus limits the compactness of the recording and/or reproducing apparatus.